Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 3:57 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> * Saturday, 2011-10-15 at 15:08 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>
>> On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 12:50 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>> > * Saturday, 2011-10-15 at 12:16 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>> >
>> >> >> {ro te cange poi ponse lo xasli cu darxi ri}
>> >
>> >> I would say the Lojban is meaningful and (roughly) equivalent to
>> >> "every farmer who is a donkey-owner is a donkey-beater".
>> >
>> > i.e. equivalent to {ro te cange poi ponse lo xasli cu darxi lo xasli}?
>>
>> Not exactly, because we have no guarantee that the first "lo xasli"
>> and the second "lo xasli" will always have the same referent.
>
> Ah, of course, you have the first {lo xasli} having the same referent
> for all farmers, namely the kind 'donkeys'. Yes? And then the {ri} has
> this kind as its referent,

Right.

> and then you declare that kinds in x2 of
> ponse and darxi resolve existentially,

I'm not sure I do declare that. Do you declare that any individual in
the x2 of ponse and darxi resolves existentially? i.e. if I hit
someone, do I hit some stage of them, or do I hit all of their stages?
Or are stages not necessarily relevant? If you do declare existential
resolution for individuals, then I might be willing to declare it for
kinds as well.

> and context ensures that for
> a given farmer the glorked domain of the existential quantification in
> the darxi part is the set of donkeys that farmer owns.

"May suggest" rather than "ensure", assuming this existential
resolution is at all required.

> Is that accurate?

With qualifications, yes.

> Actually, can I take the opportunity to ask a crucial question I don't
> think I yet directly have: is the use of kinds necessary for you to get
> the forall-exists meaning of {ro te cange cu ponse lo xasli},

But it is not me who gets that meaning. It is you who insists that
that's the meaning. For me there is no existential quantification
present. The statement with existential quantification is a different,
more fine grained one.

> Ah. Maybe you don't handle {noi} on {lo} as I expected. I was assuming:
> {lo xasli noi da darxi}
>    == {zo'e noi xasli zi'e noi da darxi}
>    == {zo'e noi xasli gi'e se darxi da}
>    ~= {lo xasli je se darxi be da}
>
> such that you can't have a referent constant with respect to {da}, and
> hence the {ri} (being outside of the scope of {da}) doesn't have any
> referent.

Those transformations seem fine in themselves. The only question is
whether the antecedent of "ri" is the referring expression "lo xasli"
or the non-referring expression (because of the unbound variable) "lo
xasli noi da darxi". If you take the non-referring expression as the
antecedent of "ri", you can't use "ri"  outside the scope of the
quantifier that binds "da".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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